The video, In Memory of the Collapse of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, is jointly produced by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and its affiliated Research Centre of World Socialism. It tells the story on how a once great power stumbled to become a second- or third-class nation.

China faces two possible futures: one is to keep reforming to improve and perfect the market economy and limit the administrative powers, and this will lead to a market economy based on a rule of law," wrote Wu Jinglian, a renowned economist, in an article published on iceo.com.cn in September. "The other is to keep strengthening the government's role and the country will march towards a dead end of crony capitalism.